Theo Mueller

Theo Mueller was born in Zurich, Switzerland, Germany. Theo Mueller is #485 in List Billionaires People In The World. Theo Mueller is the sole owner of an increasingly diversified food enterprise grounded in dairy processing and marketing. His grandfather founded the business in 1896, in Aretsried, Bavaria. When Theo took the reins from his father in 1971, the village dairy had just four employees. Implementing new techniques in milk processing and building up sales and distribution infrastructure, his became the first dairy in Germany to offer nationwide distribution of fresh milk products -- a roll-out supported by advertising campaigns and TV spots featuring sports legends Gerd Mueller (soccer) and Boris Becker (tennis). Today, in addition to dairy subsidiaries, Theo Mueller Group comprises packing, logistics, vehicle maintenance, fruit processing, a fish restaurant chain (Nordsee) and artisanal bakery shops/cafes (Bastian's). Acquisitions have extended the company's presence as well as its product range (e.g., chilled gourmet salad, sauces and dressings). The Luxembourg-based Mueller Group -- which now has 21 production plants in ten countries, employs 27,000 people and generates revenue of around $7 billion -- has been criticized for using genetically-modified animal food, receiving questionable subsidies and for low compensation to dairy farmers. Theo himself, who is described as bullish, has been pushing many lawsuits against his critics, such as Greenpeace. In November 2015, the use of a half-naked, dark-skinned pinup model on milk bottles in Germany and Austria provoked accusations of sexism and racism. In 1995, two armed men dressed up as policemen unsuccessfully tried to kidnap Mueller. He moved to Erlenbach am Zuerichsee in Switzerland in 2003, so his children wouldn't have to pay taxes when inheriting the company. He has a special interest in supporting music education.

NET WORTH STATISTIC

2013

$2.7 Billion

2014

$3.1 Billion

2015

$3.7 Billion

2016

$4.5 Billion

2017

$4.2 Billion

2018

$4.67 Billion

TIMELINE

The Müller-Fokker Effect is a satirical science fiction novel written by John Sladek in 1970. It has long been out of print in the United States, having come out in a Pocket Books edition in 1973. A reprint was done in 1990 by Carroll & Graf. The title is a pun with the insult motherfucker, and the book itself is suffused with wordplay of all stripes.The time is "somewhere in the near future" from the 1970s, and Bob Shairp is a government worker for a project in which a human being's individual qualities can be stored as computer data — on Müller-Fokker tapes.These reel-to-reel tapes, flesh pink in color, can store an entire person's identity in four tapes. The people recorded on the tapes can be reconstructed by encoding the tapes' data into a virus and infecting someone with that virus (see mind uploading). Of course, that person would have to be backed up too, and a game of musical chairs is set in motion.Bob Shairp is being recorded for test purposes on the tapes when there is an accident and the chair he is sitting in explodes, destroying his body. Only from the tapes can he be resurrected.This somewhat conventional science-fiction premise is something of a MacGuffin, as the novel's other major characters struggle to possess the Müller-Fokker tape in numerous subplots that satirize various prominent forces in 1970s America, including the military, evangelism, men's magazines, and radical anticommunist groups such as the John Birch Society. The novel also focuses heavily on parallels between the right-wing politics of Sladek's time and Nazism: one main character is closely based on Adolf Hitler, recast as a semi-literate American racist obsessed with African Americans.Locus editor Charles N. Brown described it as "a Vonnegut-type black humor novel that starts out very well but goes on much too long with much too much crammed into it." However, he said "the first 100 pages are really excellent." Analog Science Fiction and Fact critic P. Schuyler Miller noted "it was like Ron Goulart's farces, only with more cutting edge—let's say, Goulart programmed by a Swift tape." In 1970 the public reception of the book however was low, and Sladek stopped writing science fiction novels that decade.The book received an early German translation as Der Müller-Fokker-Effekt (1970), published by W. Gebühr and was also translated into French as L'Effet Müller-Fokker (1974) and published by Éditions Opta.In the comic book series Camelot 3000, a character is seen reading the novel.The book's original blurb reads: "This, and only this, is the genuine novel of our time. Accept no imitations."Presciently, though in a satirical context, the US president is Ronald Reagan.The cover of the French translation of the book, published by Editions Opta, includes an image of comic book character Spider-Man shooting heroin.